


starcrossed

by TheBrokaryotes



Category: The Martian (2015), 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Quirks (My Hero Academia), Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Hurt, M/M, Nobody dies I swear, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Tags May Change, also m1neta doesn’t exist, and if you havent then get ready, i pretty much follow canon martian universe aside from a few major changes, i spent so much time researching mars you have no idea, if the martian was with BNHA and also much gayer, so if you've seen the martian you know what's up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2019-06-30 21:56:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15760488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBrokaryotes/pseuds/TheBrokaryotes
Summary: When the devoted crew of theHero IVmission on Mars is ordered to evacuate during a storm, they accidentally leave behind their commander and crewmate, presuming them both to be dead. With limited resources at their disposal and a slim chance of rescue, Commander Bakugo Katsuki and Astronaut Kirishima Eijiro must fight against all odds to survive the unforgiving Martian terrain. Meanwhile, on Earth, the gifted minds at the U.A. Space Agency must come together to bring their explorers home.





	1. mars

**Author's Note:**

> in which "gay in space" is taken to an entirely new level
> 
> idk what to say. i watched the martian and this happened

_SOL 18, 4:41 PM_  

* * *

 

The sun beats down heavily upon the blood-red cliff faces and mountain ranges that jut up along the horizon line like teeth. Even as it begins to set, leaving a venetian blue veil of sappy light draping over the land, the residual heat from the sand shimmers throughout the valley, tricking the eyes and playing with the mind. Everything is still, quiet, apart from the dull whistle of the wind through the rocks. Uncivilized and untouched, the desert stretches out for hundreds of miles.

Kirishima lifts his head against the swelter of the sun, staring down at him and forcing him to squint through his visor. He doesn’t think he would ever get tired of this, no matter how far from home they might be. It’s so foreign, not just geographically, but as a concept wholly and completely. A sense of being privy to something both innocent in its discovery and achingly ancient washes over him now, as it does each time he soaks up the view of the landscape—the unfamiliar periwinkle bluffs, the indigo tors that dot the thin line between the sky and the planet’s surface. All of it is breathtaking.

“ _Pikachu to the rest of the outside, how’s everything looking?_ ”

The hum of Kaminari’s voice buzzes from the intercom inside of Kirishima’s helmet and effectively snaps him out of his mesmerized stupor. With his eyes still trained on the sky and a smile spreading over his face, he replies, “Red to Pikachu, the Basin is swept and gridded. Rock samples from the northern sector appear largely igneous in nature, should be interesting for chem analysis. I’m bringing back a few samples now.”

“ _Whoa!”_

A new voice, Mina’s, crackles through the com with an air of breathlessness, as if she had just descended the ladder to their ascension vehicle—they call it the MAV, but Mina calls it her ‘baby’— _“Kirishima, did… did you just discover rocks?”_

The sarcasm in Mina’s voice only serves to widen the smile on Kirishima’s face. Mina is the crew’s flight and payload specialist, and she wears her many badges of honor proudly. Like Kirishima, this is her first mission, although he gets the feeling more often than not that she is light years ahead of him in her field. Not to mention the pair tend to compete over the validity of their respective sciences.

“What’s your job again, Mina?” he snickers in response, almost to himself as he turns away from the western sky and begins trekking back towards their surface habitat. “Making sure the MAV is still there?”

He can see his crew mate at the base of the MAV’s ladder from his spot just north of the Hab, making her way back as well. Her visor is turned toward him, as if she’s staring him down from eighty yards away.

“ _Visual inspection is the most surefire form of success,_ ” she continues, playful vexation in her patient words. She turns her head to stare dramatically up at the tall shuttle craft she had just exited, a metal pear with legs squatting in the sand. She raises her palm to it, smacking it firmly on one of its stabilizers. “ _And, just to be clear, my baby is still here._ ”

“I still can’t believe you gave birth to a whole MAV unit _,"_  Kirishima retorts with as much seriousness and wonder as he can muster.

“ _Kids, behave yourselves,_ ” Kaminari warns teasingly through the intercom. Kirishima spies him by the solar arrays, fiddling with the central control box. Befitting of his self-imposed nickname, the capable but occasionally-overzealous mechanical engineer always earned himself the cozy task of making sure the solar arrays controlling the internal temperature, pressurization levels, oxygen capacity, radio communications, lighting, and general fixtures of the Hab weren’t ready to fry at any given moment. “ _Mommy might get upset.”_

Mina and Kirishima both snort, despite a combined effort not to. At nearly the same time as their delight chatters over the radio, they catch the exasperated growl of their Commander and go silent.

“ _Shitty Hair, Pinky, Pikachu, all of you need to close your channels before I throw you down the mountain.”_

Kirishima can’t deny that Commander Bakugo is someone who many at the United Aerospace Agency, including the entirety of the crew, would refer to as “a complete asshole”. With an ego the size of Everest and a mind set in stone, working with him proves difficult a fair percent of the time. Kirishima has come to learn by now that some colleagues just _are_ that way; however, if he had his pick of the litter as a commanding officer, he wasn’t sure whether or not Bakugo would be at the top of the list.

Yet, despite his attitude and propensity for biting the heads off of each one of his crewmen on a daily basis, in the same way that he cannot deny his dickishness, Kirishima cannot ignore Bakugo’s capability either. Like most U.A. prodigies, he holds multiple degrees various STEM fields, and knows more about astrophysics than anyone Kirishima has ever met. He topped the charts in U.A.’s astronaut program despite joining the agency at just twenty-two, a full decade younger than most astronauts. Five years and three voyages into space later, Bakugo had proven himself a worthy enough cadet to be granted his own crew. That has to count for something.

“ _Hear that, Pinky? Mommy said to shut your mouth,_ ” Kaminari presses. The intercom crackles with the telltale sign of the internal Hab signal.

“ _We may all want to watch our mouths,_ ” Sero’s voice warns, though the lilt in his tone suggests that he too is getting a kick out of listening to his cohorts get up to their antics again. “ _I feel like I should remind everyone that everything we say is being broadcasted back to headquarters.”_

“ _Pe_ _rmission to close radio channels, Commander?”_ Jirou’s unentertained voice pipes up from her com unit. Kirishima can make out the click of her fingers against a keyboard in the background, probably complaining about all five of them to headquarters. “ _I_ _’d prefer not to hear the word ‘Mommy’ from Kaminari ever again._ ”

Kaminari’s voice returns to the static, somewhat desperate. “ _I_ _’d just like to say, communication is the foundation of a functional—”_

“ _Shut ‘em off,_ ” Bakugo barks, the radio squawking into silence just short of a breath later.

Kaminari throws up his hands in exasperation, looking like an irritated pushpin in the distance. Smiling, Kirishima trails a loading cart full of rock samples behind him as he makes his way up the slight hill toward the Hab, glancing back over his shoulder once he makes it to the Basin’s crest. The blue of the evening was starting to set in. Soon it would give in to darkness, and if the night should prove clear, then the crew would have the opportunity to bear witness to more stars than any of them could even conceive of back on Earth.

 _Earth._ Kirishima missed it every day, undoubtedly. Certainly there are aspects of Mars that make it unique to anywhere else Kirishima had ever been (in the most extreme sense), but Earth is home. Earth is where his family is, where he was born and raised and taught to know that there even _were_ planets apart from the one he had occupied just shy of a year ago. He should, and does, count himself lucky that his first expedition would be as a member of _Hero IV_ ’s crew, and even luckier that he would be chosen among thousands of applicants to go to Mars. He could have just as easily gotten stuck with the observation crew in the space station, staring at wires all day and drifting lazily around a boringly familiar orbit. But at least then, he’d be closer to Earth.

An eerie feeling passes over Kirishima in that moment, the long, slow sensation of aching dread. It drags in his gut like it’s dredging up a pond, slow tendrils curling between the spaces of his ribcage and pulling tight. Images of his parent’s house in Naha flicker in high definition behind his eyes, practically projected onto the interior of his visor. He sees the faces of his sisters, remembers that the eldest is getting married soon. The youngest will have been through with her junior year of college by the time he returns. So much will have changed, and so fast.

_And I won’t even be planetside to see it._

As quick as it emerges, Kirishima takes a long breath to force the feeling back down. He’d been grappling with homesickness since the moment he set foot on the shuttle bringing them here. There was nothing unusual about it. _Almost there_ , he reminds himself. _Just get these rocks back to Hab first._

Upon his first step forward, the crackle of the radio clicks at his ears, surprising him into a jolt. Jirou’s voice was on the other end, the low hum of panic behind her cut-off words.

“— _eryone inside, right now. Commander, you’ll want to see this."_


	2. scrubbed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _My battery is running low and it's getting dark..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI IT'S BEEN ABOUT EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS
> 
> thanks to a beautiful recent comment, my fiery love of this fic as been reignited and i wanted to come back to it. i cannot guarantee a consistent posting schedule since midterms are right around the corner and i'll be moving shortly (yikes!!) but i will try to have at least a monthly output if possible. if not, someone please comment and tell me so i get my ass in gear.
> 
> enjoy!

_SOL 18, 4:51 PM_

 

“—saw the alert this morning.”

Kirishima can hear Bakugo grumbling from the central interior of the Hab. He’d only just walked in from the pressurization corridor on Kaminari’s heels. Mina had stayed with the MAV under direct orders, though none of them were truly certain why.

An air of uneasiness had seeped into their Hab, and Kirishima could feel it the moment he removed his helmet, hooking it beneath his arm. His eyes track the rest of his crew huddled by Jirou’s computer, Kaminari leaning over her shoulder to peer with concern at the screen. Sero, the crew’s doctor, and the only person on Mars with a medical license, leans on an exam table a foot away from them, fiddling with the gauze binding on his forearm, leftover from a nasty scrape on a Martian rock.

Bakugo stands rigid, directly behind the communication specialist with his arms crossed over his chest. The dark burgundy undershirt of his general-issue terrestrial exploration suit crops just below his jawline and cuts off right at the swell of his bicep, where his fingers curl uncomfortably into his pale skin. The rest of his suit hangs haphazardly from his waist, half shrugged off in an effort to display his current level of vexation with the situation. His dusty blonde hair is matted in the back with sweat and kinked up at odd angles from the helmet’s head covering. Already-irritated features notwithstanding, he looks more pissed off now than usual—his sharp nose crinkles at the bridge, thin eyes turned to slits under the scowl of his strong blonde brow. His mouth pulls into a tight line, giving him the overall appearance of an off-put pomeranian about to start barking.

“They’re saying it’s going to be worse than before,” Jirou relays, chewing her lower lip. She has a few tabs open on her computer, her U.A. headset pressed to one ear and slipped back off the other. Her fingers move like lightning as she relays messages back and forth from headquarters. “Estimated time of arrival is now in less than an hour.”

“Nine hundred kilometers wide, bearing thirty-six point seventeen degrees’... that’s headed right for us,” Kaminari determines, straightening up.

Bakugo remains quiet, eyes scanning over the laptop screen. Kirishima steps forward to get a look at the topographical doppler illuminating their worried faces.

What he sees makes his stomach curl in on itself. Even in its pixelated rendering, the doppler radar had death written all over it. The red dot indicating the Hab’s location, nestled comfortably in the protective arms of a craggy crater, becomes overwhelmed within seconds by the shifting tsunami-like pattern of the predicted dust storm on its way from the northeast.

“‘Current escalation is ten point two kilometers per second and growing’,” he reads, almost entranced. “That would make the estimated force almost—”

A swear slips his lips as Kirishima calculates the number in his head. “Shit, almost 8,700 Newtons.”

“What’s the abort force?” Sero asks, standing up from the exam table.

“7,500,” Jirou responds. Kirishima watches as Bakugo mouths the number at the same time. “Anything above that, and our MAV tips over.”

The crew stands in shocked and disappointed silence for a moment. Kirishima watches their expressions shift as they scan through options in their heads. Set jaws, fidgety hands—this is not a good situation. Their safest bet would be to evacuate the site and leave twelve sols earlier than originally planned. Not only would that leave them nearly two weeks shy of completing their mission, but the force and speed of the incoming dust storm would mean that much of what they had brought and gathered while here would get left behind. But they would all presumably live. If they chose to stay, the MAV could tip. Then nobody would be going home.

Kirishima watches the doppler swirl and consume their Hab, then quickly reset itself, growing closer every time. The longer they debated this, the less time they had to make a decision.

No one speaks. Slowly, all eyes turn to Bakugo, who has yet to move from where he stands. His gaze is piercing, but there’s no focus to it. Right now, Kirishima thinks, he’s just trying to make the best choice.

“So, are we scrubbed?” Kaminari finally pipes up.

“No,” Bakugo quips back instantly. Kirishima watches the fire in his eyes flicker as he dismisses the option of leaving. “Not yet.”

“Commander, the advisory is critical,” Jirou almost pleads. “Unless we engage emergency procedures _now_ and then use the collective power of prayer and luck, our MAV is going to go over.”

Kirishima is speaking before he realizes it. “There’s a margin of error,” he points out, feeling hot under his suit collar as all eyes turn to him. He’s not sure if it’s everyone’s focus that’s making him uncomfortable, or the fact that he just agreed to stay in what was basically a death trap of a situation. He swallows, throat dry.

“We’d be pushing our limits, but it’s possible we can make it if we shore up the MAV enough and batten down our hatches,” he suggests.

“Yeah, we’re not scrubbed till they say we are!” Kaminari agrees, perhaps too jovially. Kirishima only spares him a half glance in his periphery, too focused on the look that Bakugo is giving him to care. It’s nearly impossible to tell if Bakugo is truly angry or just thinking very hard about something, and given the situation, Kirishima thinks this feat has been made doubly difficult.

But Bakugo doesn’t tell him to shut his mouth. Instead, the corner of his lip twitches into what could almost be called a proud smile. “Alright,” he finally utters, dropping his hands to rest on his hips. “Prepare emergency procedures. I want everyone suited up and ready to go outside in three minutes. Radio Pinky and tell her to—”

A small blip on Jirou’s computer accompanied by the bell of an incoming transmission interrupts Bakugo’s orders. All eyes turn to the screen.

“Commander,” Jirou breathes. Her eyes stick to the hazy blue of the monitor as her face drains of all color. “They just gave the word. ‘Begin abort procedures.’”

Bakugo’s lips are still parted as he leans down over Jirou’s shoulder to look at the message himself. After a long pause, the tension mounting in the room, he straightens up, grim and quiet.

“We can wait it out,” Kaminari murmurs, but he seems hesitant. His eyebrows pinch together in worry, a look mirrored in Sero’s face as he steps forward to stand by his comrade with his arms crossed. “It may not be as bad as they say,” he adds.

" _Guys?_ "

Mina’s voice crackles through the intercom. The gravelly sound of wind against her mic and the distant roar of rapid movement can be heard behind her worried tone. " _The sky’s getting darker, and I can see something coming up about 30 degrees from the north…”_

“Tell her to come inside,” Kirishima presses, the clutch of fear pushed aside as his will to survive and persevere kicks in. As much as he would love to get back home, their team had come here with a mission to complete, and that’s what they all intended to do. “We can wait it out.”

Bakugo presses his thumb in his fist against his mouth, eyes darting back and forth before they finally close in defeat. Kirishima didn’t need to hear the word to read it on his commander’s face: _fuck_.

“Prep for emergency departure,” Bakugo finally sighs. “I want everyone in their suits and ready to move to the MAV in fifteen minutes.”

Despite the prospect of returning home now becoming an imminent reality, Kirishima feels his heart sink at the thought of abandoning their station. “Commander,” he chirps, stepping to Bakugo’s side to get his attention as Jirou relays the message to Mina, and the rest of the crew begins to move into action.

Kirishima can feel the prickle of Bakugo’s sharp gaze in his forehead as he turns to look his way. He had that way of staring right through each one of the crew members that tended to turn them off of questioning anything he said.

“Get moving, Shark Boy,” he barks, stepping aside and starting to pull his suit back up over his shoulders. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“Bakugo, the margin of error is at least 2,000 Newtons,” Kirishima explains, trailing after the blonde as he crosses the atrium to the side hall of the Hab where their emergency kits were stored. “If we can figure out a way to shore up the MAV—”

Bakugo turns on his heel, and Kirishima almost collides with him in the narrow space. Kirishima feels the blood in his veins go cold as he watches his commander’s eyes flash with fury.

“We’re _scrubbed_ ,” Bakugo nearly spits. “That’s an order. Now get your shit in gear and let’s _go_.”

Stunned into silence, all Kirishima can do is watch Bakugo turn and resume his pace, throwing “And that’s ‘Commander’ to you,” over his shoulder.

With a low sigh that trembles in the back of his throat, Kirishima trudges off towards his personal locker to retrieve his emergency kit.

 _We’re going home,_ he reminds himself as he sorts through his items. He wishes his stomach would stop turning over at the thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh kiri. if only you knew.
> 
> also i know that martian dust storms don't actually reach hurricane speeds. please just pretend like i know what i'm talking about and that the universe, for the sake these sweet summer children, has bent the rules for a single day.
> 
> also don't check my math. i know it's wrong.


	3. the fray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A sickening groan sounds off from the Hab just before Kirishima’s voice cuts out, followed quickly by the swift whip of cable snapping and a hard thunk above the wind. Bakugo catches a flash of light across his visor before it disappears overhead._
> 
> _No._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im pretty sick so lets post ch 3 babey
> 
> uhhhhhhhhhh hopefully ch 4 will be proofread and ready by mid-late april?? whomstdve knows. enjoy!

_SOL 18, 5:14 PM_

Mina had radioed in as the crew was finishing their departure prep. “ _Stay frosty,_ ” she warns in absolute seriousness over the howl of the wind in her com. “ _They were right to upgrade this bitch._ ”

“Alright,” Bakugo begins as the crew lines up outside the airlock. His hands are clammy inside his gloves as he slides his helmet on, listening to the hiss of the pressurizer as it snaps into place, and opens the door. “Visibility will be nearly zero. Winds are bearing down from the northeast at hurricane speeds. If you get lost, lock in on my suit’s telemetry.”

He hears the tell-tale blips and beeps of his crew locking onto his signal as he opens the thick white door to the airlock. In the event of a loss of visual, the biofeedback being collected from his suit emits a transmission to the GPS computers built into everyone’s display visor. That way, even if they weren’t able to see one another, they could still find him. 

It had not taken them very long to prepare everything for their journey. With the impending nature of the storm and the swiftness with which they were ordered to evacuate, the crew did not have much time to collect any of their belongings aside from a few samples they placed in the storage units of their suits. All their hard work, for nothing. Over three hundred days of space travel, and they had naught but some test tubes of dirt and some video logs to show for it.

“ _Look on the bright side,_ ” Kaminari’s crackling voice pipes over the radio as they file singley into the airlock, looking over his shoulder at the crew. “ _We’ll be the first case of space travelers escaping the clutches of a famed Martian dust storm._ ”

The joke earns nothing but uncomfortable shuffling from the crew, although Bakugo thinks he can hear a weak high-five from Kaminari and Kirishima at the back of the line. _This isn’t a bright anything_ , he grumbles internally, feeling the hot wash of shame down his chest as his brain continually surges back to the fact that he’s being forced to abandon his post and return, fruitless, back to Earth. 

“Pay attention,” he snaps over the intercom, glancing over his shoulder as Sero pulls the airlock door shut behind them. “The storm is picking up speed as we speak. It’s a one-hundred meter crossing to the MAV, and we’re all going to get shit on by dust and rock and Martian bullshit. So face forward and keep moving. Pinky, how soon will the MAV be ready?”

“ _Three minutes, Commander,_ ” Mina states over the radio, “ _then she’ll be primed for takeoff. Better hurry, we’re already at a three-degree tilt._ ”

She isn’t wrong—even now, the sound of the wind whipping around outside permeates the encapsulated space of the airlock. Bits of sand and rock chip along the roof of the enclosure, and the weak fluorescents keeping the area lit seem dulled with the lack of solar light on the arrays outside. This isn’t shaping up to be a pleasant trip, however brief.

“Roger,” Bakugo breathes through the com, squaring up his shoulders as he prepares to open the second airlock door into the waiting calamity. His arms feel like lead as he lifts them up to the clean metal of the door lever. “Let’s get a move on.”

Each turn of the stile echoes with the heartbeat in Bakugo’s chest. _One, two, three, four—_

There’s no time to react as the sheer force of the pressure outside of the Hab rushes in through the open door. Bakugo sees the ceiling, then the wall and the floor of the airlock, weightless until he crashes heavily against the back panel of the small room.

“ _Commander!_ ”

His ears buzz and his head pounds as he tries to regain sense, the storm not even offering him a chance to get his bearings. The red-and-black dust caught in the wind scatters throughout the airlock, blurring his vision. There’s pressure all around, the force of the air, and then there’s leverage on his bicep, pulling him up—Kirishima, helping him to his feet.

“ _Commander, are you alright?_ ” Jirou calls. Everyone is pressed to the side of the walls, awaiting Bakugo as he stumbles upright, shrugging Kirishima off of his arm.

“I’m fine,” he growls, wincing as his jaw clicks unnaturally, pain shooting up his left temple. His vision is still splotchy as he shambles toward the door, holding his arms up a bit forward to brace against the wind. “Follow me.”

Outside is even worse. The lack of a complete atmosphere on Mars means that sound is limited, but that’s no less terrifying when, even with the flashlights mounted on their helmets, none of the crew can see more than a foot in front of them. Bakugo constantly has to reference the GPS on his suit arm to reorient his crew to the MAV’s location. It’s not just dust carried by the growling, seething wind, but rocks and dirt chunks, or the occasional litter from their Hab site. Everything slams into their visors and chokes up their visuals, forcing them all to grope for each other in the dark.

Not to mention, the sheer amount of effort it takes to stay upright is a feat all on its own. Bakugo leans his body into the wind as he walks, never breaking a ninety-degree angle with the ground. He stumbles every few feet, nearly falling twice, but managing to stay upright.

After an agonizing minute or so of walking, the MAV’s lights become visible a few dozen meters ahead, and Mina’s voice comes in.

“ _She’s ready, Commander! Tip is at 5.8 degrees and rising!_ ”

“Roger,” Bakugo yells back, breathless. He can make out the floodlight of the MAV’s ascent hatch opening as the ladder drops down. They’re close now. 

“ _Hey, Commander! I think I figured out a way to keep the MAV from tipping!_ ”

_Good Christ._ It’s Kirishima’s voice from the back of the group, at precisely the wrong moment.

“How, dumbass?” Bakugo throws back, rhetorical sarcasm dripping in his voice, though apparently not saturated enough to keep Kirishima from replying idiotically.

“ _We can use the solar cables as guy wires!_ ” he explains. “ _We can anchor the Rover to the north side and—_ ”

A sickening groan sounds off from the Hab just before Kirishima’s voice cuts out, followed quickly by the swift whip of cable snapping and a hard thunk above the wind. Bakugo catches a flash of light across his visor before it disappears overhead.

_No._

“ _Kirishima!_ ” Kaminari screams.

Bakugo halts, blood turned to ice in his veins. “What happened?” he demands, already lifting his arm to scan for the bio readings of his crew. Kaminari, Jirou, Ashido, Sero—

“ _Commander, Kirishima’s decompression alarm went off and his telemetry signal is gone!_ ” Jirou cries.

_Fuck, no. No._

“Did anyone see what happened?!” Bakugo shouts, his ears ringing as the blood drains rapidly from his face. He peers about wildly in the darkness, breath picking up in his lungs. _No, no, god, no._

“ _He’s offline, I’ve got no sight of him!_ ” Jirou continues.

“ _He—h-he was right in front of me, and—_ ” Kaminari’s voice stalls halfway through his panicked words. “ _—and then he was just gone. He—he disappeared, due south—_ ”

Bakugo can barely see his own hand in front of his face. The dull light of Sero and Jirou by his side is almost completely obscured by the hailstorm of dust and debris. His mind lurches out in protest of the situation, of Kirishima’s loss, straining for an explanation, for a plan—he has to think. _Think._

“Goddammit… okay,” he finally trembles, gritting his teeth and forcing the bile in his stomach down. “Ashido, get the MAV ready for launch. Everyone else, home in on her telemetry! It’ll get you to the MAV!”

A soft yelp on Jirou’s line sounds off as she stumbles forward. Sero grabs her elbow as they walk together, slow in step. “ _I can’t see,_ ” she whimpers.

“ _Sero!_ ” Kaminari calls, “ _if he’s decompressed, how long can he survive?_ ”

“ _Less than a minute,_ ” Sero relays, anxiety layered in the declaration. “ _Commander, where are you going?_ ”

Bakugo doesn’t respond. He’s not thinking. He can’t think. His brain had done it’s part in thinking for the rest of the team, and now, all he can focus on is Kirishima. His empty readout, his absent biofeedback, the echo of the snap of metal against his suit as it tore him away into the discord of the storm.

“ _8.6 degrees and rising, Commander!_ ”

“Get to the MAV!” Bakugo orders, orienting his body to the southwest and beginning to shuffle slowly in the direction of the wind. “Go, now, everyone!”

_What are you doing?_ The thought flutters around in his mind, stuck somewhere in the middle between terrified, angry, and bewildered. He feels like a fish caught on the shore, flouncing about in the sand and sucking in dirty air. He has no precedent for this, no feeling to fall back on, no training for what to do if a crewmate is snatched away into the unforgiving vice grip of Martian fury. Nothing.

He starts off to the south where Kaminari had said Kirishima had disappeared. Every footstep is treacherous and precariously placed, unaided by the churning sensation in his stomach. The raw, steady drag of a proverbial knife in his gut has nowhere to finish its incision, so it goes on and on and on until its sting surfaces behind Bakugo’s eyes.

_Idiot._ Who is he talking to now, he wonders? Himself, or Kirishima?

Mina’s worried voice breaks the silence of Bakugo’s own torrid thoughts a minute later. “ _Sero and Jirou have made it to the MAV. Tilt is at 9.3.”_

_Shit._ “What’s the limit?”

A pause. “ _Technically 12.3. It can make 13, but after that manual calibration is—_ ”

“Keep it steady,” Bakugo growls. “Pikachu, get your ass inside, _now._ ”

“ _Copy that, starting ascent!_ ” Kaminari warbles back.

“ _Commander,_ ” Sero calls in, “ _Kirishima’s last transmission came through. It’s a raw data packet—_ ”

Bakugo halts his pace, blinking against the darkness and wincing at a sharp rock bullets into his arm. “What’s the readout?” he demands, barely able to suppress the strain in his voice.

“ _It’s plaintext, but—_ ” Sero cuts out for a bloodcurdling moment, replaced by static until it crackles back to life. “ _—blood pressure: 0. heart rate: 0. Temperature: normal, 37º Celsius._ ”

“‘Normal’?” Bakugo repeats, hope fluttering in his chest, ensnared in panic. The wind bobbles him around like a plaything as he shakes against it.

An intolerably long static shift over the radio. “ _It takes the… it can take the body a while to cool._ ”

Air fills Bakugo’s lungs with nowhere to go. For a moment, there’s nothing but the wind around him and the strain in his legs keeping him upright. _This isn’t possible,_ he thinks, blinking back the sting in his eyes. _This isn’t happening. It’s impossible._

“ _Commander,_ ” Mina says, voice rising in pitch with apprehension. “ _We’re at 10.5 degrees, pushing 11. You need to get inside, now._ ”

_Shit._ “If it tips, can you launch before it falls?” Bakugo asks. 

“ _...Yes, sir. I can. But—_ ”

“Do it, then,” he hears himself order. It’s far away, disembodied. “I’m finding him.”

_If I can’t bring him back alive, the least I can do is bring him back._

“ _I won’t leave you behind!_ ”

Mina’s cry resounds distantly in Bakugo’s ears. Emotions well in his throat, swirling and kicking up dust like the storm just outside his suit. “I just gave you an order, Pinky,” he growls. “If it starts to tilt, you leave. Understand?”

There’s no reply for a moment as Bakugo continues south, staring at the ground below his feet. “Understand?!” he repeats after a few seconds, practically screaming.

“ _Yes, sir,_ ” Mina whimpers. “ _Tilt at 11.2._ ”

Despair pools in Bakugo’s belly, and he pushes past it, forging ahead. The winds pick up, buffeting him with rocks and debris, as if it was just _trying_ to knock him over. There’s a howl outside of his helmet, eerie like a spectre of death awaiting him just a meter ahead, where he can’t see. It’s all he can do to fight the anger, at himself, at Kirishima, at U.A., at the whole _fucking_ planet. At the fact that he can’t think of anything to do except to grope in the dark, fumbling like a child on all fours. 

“ _Bakugo._ ”

It’s Kaminari, slow and gentle, but it’s evident that he’s as distressed as Bakugo feels. “ _I know you don’t want to hear this, but Kiri… Eijiro is dead._ ”

_Dead._

The single syllable drops like a stone, flashing in the light that Kaminari had set it under. _I know,_ is Bakugo’s first thought, followed swiftly by _no, no, not on my fucking watch he’s not._

“We don’t know that,” Bakugo chokes out, swallowing his fear. “Jirou, can the proximity radar hone in on his signal?”

“ _Negative,_ ” Jirou replies. “ _It’s made to see the Hero in orbit, not the metal in a single suit._ ”

“ _Bakugo, please,_ ” Kaminari pleads. “ _My friend just died, I can’t have you to die too!_ ”

A strong gust knocks Bakugo to his knees. He digs his fingers into the rough sand beneath him, toeing into the ground with his boot tips. He grits his teeth and grunts, looking over his shoulder at the MAV as it groans sickeningly, lights waving.

“ _Tilt at 12.3! Commander, we’re going over!_ ”

The wind rips against Bakugo’s shoulder blades, threatening to tear him to shreds. He grimaces as piece of debris attempt to flay his suit, the howl of the wind and the shouts of his crewmates over the intercom nothing beneath the roaring in his ears.

_Eijiro is dead._ The words keep replaying over and over in his mind, nestling in a far corner somewhere and itching where it could never be scratched. _Dead._

“ _Commander, please!_ ”

_Fuck, shit, goddammit!_

“Alright!” Bakugo calls desperately, body shaking with his final verdict, talking over his crew’s desperate crowing at his distress. “Alright! I’m coming, I’m coming.”

He turns to fight the wind, redirecting himself to the MAV as guilt and dread tug him in the other direction. _You can’t,_ he tells himself, _you can’t just leave him behind._ But his feet begin to move as his remaining crew members guide him through the storm.

“ _Tilt at 12.4,_ ” Mina nearly sobs. “ _Commander, please!_ ”

Bakugo glances over his shoulder, then back to the MAV. Eijirou is dead.

“Shut down the proximity radar,” he orders, praying he can still be heard. “I’m on my—”

It happens quickly, almost as quickly as it must have happened to Kirishima. Bakugo goes down on one knee again, digging into the sand, and then a heavy weight slams into him. A second after, he’s airborne, the projectile sending him flailing up, up, at the mercy of the wind. He feels like he’s up in the air for quite a while, the gritty darkness spinning every which way, debri hitting his visor, the sinking dread of hitting the ground only a distant gnawing in his gut as his mind tries to fill in the blanks of exactly what could be happening to him.

He must have screamed, but he cannot remember. All he remembers colliding with something hard, heavy, and solid. The sting of his head against his helmet.

Then it all goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no one's dead. don't worry


	4. adrenaline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He screams out his fear, his frustration, his guilt, until his throat his numb and his ears are ringing with the vibrations. He has failed, utterly and miserably, to do the one thing above all that he was required to do. Before being a commander, an astronaut, or a hero of any kind, his first and most important job was to keep his crew alive._
> 
>  
> 
> _He’d lost._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI GUYS SORRY THIS IS LIKE A MONTH LATE
> 
> i’m working on the next few chapters and i’m gonna try to have a consistent schedule but i’m goin abroad soon so that might not........happen :/
> 
> ALSO thanks to those who have commented! i appreciate all the feedback and support! ❤️❤️❤️

_U.A. Agency, 9:58 AM_

The lights of cameras flash in Yaoyorozu’s eyes as she stands at the head of the briefing room behind a podium. Her ankles are trembling in her black pumps as she flicks open a red folder on the slanted surface in front of her. Normally, these sorts of things were left to her press secretary.

Today is different.

Glancing up from underneath her bangs at the sea of journalists and cameramen, all aching for her attention, she shifts her weight from foot to foot, rolling her shoulders back and willing her voice not to falter. The words on the crisp white paper seem to float about as her eyes struggle to focus on them.

“Yesterday at around 2:30 PM, Japan standard time, our satellites detected a storm approaching the _Hero IV_ mission site on Mars.”

The lights start to flash more rapidly now, a low murmur beginning to ebb and flow in the room like the tide. Yaoyorozu does her best to ignore it, concentrating instead on quelling the prickly sensation of guilt in her gut. The folder feels thick and smooth between her clammy fingers, like blood.

“By 4:45, the storm had escalated to ‘severe’,” she continues, “and we had no choice but to abort the _Hero IV_ mission. Thanks to the quick thinking of Commander Katsuki Bakugo, astronauts Mina Ashido, Denki Kaminari, Sero Hanta, and Jirou Kyoka successfully reached the Mars Ascent Vehicle to perform an emergency launch at 5:23 PM.”

A hum of praise from the collective in the room. Many journalists bury their faces in their notepads, writing down times, names, Yaoyorozu’s words. She takes a moment to breathe, privately. She keeps her eyes level while her head swims. She’s not ready for this. No one should ever get to the point where they’re ready for this.

“Unfortunately,” she begins, and the contentedness of the room falls to pieces. All goes quiet. The flashing lights stall momentarily. Even without them, Yaoyorozu feels as vulnerable as a deer caught in someone’s high beams.

“—during the evacuation, Astronaut Eijirou Kirishima was struck by debris, disrupting his telemetry and biofeedback signals. While guiding the remainder of his crew into the Mars Ascent Vehicle, Commander Bakugo stayed behind to search for his fallen crew member.”

A stir, building in size and volume, as the journalists start to mutter to one another. This is not a sensation, Yaoyorozu hears herself think. _This is a tragedy._

“Before a connection with Kirishima could be made, the crew of the _Hero IV_ reportedly lost contact with Commander Bakugo. Under orders by their Commander prior to this event, due to the severity of the storm, the remaining crew was forced to launch and return to their orbiting craft.”

Yaoyorozu’s heartbeat is louder than her words. Her eyes flick down the page, her tongue darting over her dry lips, to the final sentence of her briefing.

“At this time, both men are presumed dead.”

The room erupts. The lights return, blinding, exacerbating Yaoyorozu’s already-pounding headache. Journalists rise from their seats and shout over one another, calling her name and screaming out questions. _How can you be certain? What proof does the crew have? How soon will they return? What impact does this have on future Mars expeditions?_

Yaoyorozu looks down at the briefing. The words she had just read off the page.

_Both men are presumed dead._

Her fingers tremble as she closes the red folder and holds her head up high. 

_\--_

_SOL 19, 5:11 AM_

Bakugo dreams of home. 

He’s in his backyard, his a small fire in a rock-lined pit. He’s standing beside the flames, his bare feet pressed into soft, green grass. He looks up. The sky is blue, puffy clouds sailing overhead. _Safe,_ he thinks, feeling a smile. 

He looks back to the fire, Carefully, he reaches out to brush his fingers over the tendrils of flame. They are cool against his palm, and where he touches them, comforting. Warm. Safe. 

_Come home safe._ His mother’s voice. Her cold embrace and warm, teary eyes. 

The fire crackles, leaping up toward him, fanning out over his chest, and his eyes snap open. 

A gasp rips into Bakugo’s lungs so hard it hurts. The sun beams directly into his eyes, blinding. Where are his arms? His legs? 

_Breathe._

Panic sets in quickly as he registers a beep coming from inside his helmet, followed by an automated voice: _“Warning: solar levels critical. Oxygen at 10%. Pressure unstable.”_

Bakugo’s breath grows more rapid as he tries to get his bearings. _Move. Don’t panic._ He wrenches his arms, his legs. They’re stiff, awkward, but they shift carefully underneath him.

_“Warning: oxygen at 9% and dropping.”_

_Don’t panic._

Bakugo draws in a few quivering breaths, each one slower and longer than the last. _Conserve your oxygen,_ he thinks. _If there’s a breach, you can’t panic. You won’t be able to breathe._

He struggles to his feet, falling back to his knees a few times as he kicks sand away from his ankles. Once upright, he twists around to get a good look at his surroundings. The hab is behind him, a few dozen meters away, buffeted by a mound of red sand on one side. Embedded in the mound, Bakugo sees what struck him—one of the panels from the solar array sticks upright out the sand, crumpled like tinfoil. He can see a perfectly circular dent where it had collided with his helmet and thrown him into the wind.

 _Fucking Christ,_ he thinks, looking away and taking another shuddering breath. _Where’s the crew? What happened?_

It floods back to him like getting knocked out all over again. The storm, the MAV tipping, Kirishima, ordering Mina to launch—

_Kirishima._

Bakugo whips around wildly, eyes straining against the landscape in search of any sign of his crewmate. “Kirishima!” he calls hoarsely into the desert. _South,_ he remembers in Kaminari’s voice, and he glances down at his arm to reorient. Despite the lack of consistent solar energy to his suit, the computer was still on, and the compass in the top corner told him his direction.

He looks up, peering into the orange haze. “Kirishima!” he calls again, a fearful echo into his helmet as he stumbles down the hill, disoriented. There’s nothing but mounds of dust and dirt, emptiness that peels off into the distance in every direction and halts only at a murky horizon line.

As he continues, calling for Kirishima every few steps, a flash of light catches his attention. A glint off of metal. His eyes focus in on it, squinting.

There, not fifty meters away, he sees it—a helmet, half buried in the sand amidst a tangle of cable wiring and a broken satellite dish.

Bakugo’s legs move all on their own as he breaks out into a choppy run in the sand towards the the flashing light. His vision blurs as he goes, and the warning inside his helmet blurts out again— _”Warning: oxygen at 7% and dropping.”_ He ignores it.

 _God, please,_ he prays, choking as he runs, _please don’t let him be dead._

His legs buckle underneath him as he nears Kirishima’s immobile form, and he crawls forward the rest of the way, kneeling in front of his crewmate. Brushing away the sand from his helmet and the rest of his body, Bakugo hooks an arm underneath Kirishima’s shoulder, pulling him out of the thick red sand and propping him up in his lap.

“Kirishima?” he mutters desperately, searching the astronaut’s face for any sign of life. “Kirishima, please…”

His eyes are closed, lips parted and cracking, the dark skin on his face absent of any color underneath. As Bakugo moves him, his arm falls limply across his chest. Bakugo tracks the movement, spotting something imbedded in Kirishima’s abdomen. A metal rod, about ten centimeters long and a centimeter wide. Blood is caked around the wound and on the rod itself, which depresses smoothly into Kirishima’s suit.

_No._

Desperate, unwilling to give up so quickly, Bakugo fumbles for Kirishima’s bracer arm, wiping the remaining dust away with a shaking hand to reveal a darkened but still functioning computer screen. Just like the data packet Sero had announced before the launch, the readout on his vitals were all the same, with one distinct difference.

BP: 0 HR: 0 TEMP: LOW (25º C)

 _Twenty-five degrees._ Bakugo checks the external temperature readout. Twenty-five degrees.

He drops his head, helmet clicking with Kirishima’s as he screams deafeningly, helplessly, into the emptiness of the alien desert. He screams out his fear, his frustration, his guilt, until his throat his numb and his ears are ringing with the vibrations. He has failed, utterly and miserably, to do the one thing above all that he was required to do. Before being a commander, an astronaut, or a hero of any kind, his first and most important job was to keep his crew alive.

He’d _lost._

Blinking his eyes open, Bakugo reaches up to wipe the tears that had leaked onto his cheeks away, his glove clunking into the glass of his visor. “Fuck,” he murmurs, surprised at the croak in his voice, and takes a few long, shaking breaths before breaking down once more. He sits hunched over Kirishima like a helpless animal for a few more long moments, shuddering and screaming as the urge arises, and only halting when his computer threatens him with the reminder that only 5% oxygen remains in his reserves.

He begins to pull himself together, looking up into the sky. Over the blurry crest of the mountains, the sun begins to shoot stabbing rays of light across the barren land. If falls over Bakugo’s knees and washes Kirishima’s body in an unnatural orange tint.

As the initial shock of his discovery passes, though no less a permanent ache in his soul, Bakugo begins to contemplate his next steps. What can he do about this? Where would he put Kirishima now? He can’t leave him here, that’s for certain. _God, this is too much._ Never in a million years should he have to think these thoughts.

_Hahhhh…_

It’s faint. Bakugo almost misses it over the rustle of the wind and the ringing in his ears. He turns to stare straight at Kirishima’s face. No, not his face. His visor. There, just above his mouth, the grey sheen of condensation blooms on the amber glass before disappearing.

Bakugo swallows, throat tight as he leans in closer.

Kirishima’s eyes snap open at the same time as his chest heaves, filling with air. Bakugo spooks backwards, falling onto his ass in the red sand with an unprofessional shriek of absolute shock. He watches, stunned, as a very alive and very terrified Kirishima breathes in rapidly with panic behind his glazed eyes as they dart around him. Quickly, they lock onto Bakugo, who sinks his clenched fists into the soft sand and swallows.

Kirishima parts his lips to speak, and Bakugo can hear it like a spirit through his intercom. “B-Baku—”

The mere half of the word bubbles out of Kirishima’s mouth like poison before he heaves again, trying to sit up. His eyes squeeze shut in pain as he cries out, gritty gloved hand rising to tremble over the protruding metal in his side.

Instinct and years of training kick Bakugo into high gear—he rushes forward, knees imbedded in the sand as he grabs Kirishima’s wrist. “Breathe,” he orders, his own breathless and shaky over the mic. “Slowly, Kirishima, breathe.”

“What… what is it?” Kirishima croaks out. He lets himself be moved, teeth gritting together and shaky breaths trickling over his lips.

“A… a stabilizer rod,” Bakugo replies, moving Kirishima’s hand aside. “It’s lodged in your abdomen. If you move the wrong way, you could… could rupture something, and bleed out.”

“That’s bad,” Kirishima says bluntly, swallowing with effort. “Is—is there… an exit wound?”

“No,” Bakugo determines after a moment’s inspection

“That’s good,” Kirishima mutters, eyes fluttering. Without thinking, Bakugo slaps the side of his helmet a few times to keep him conscious. 

“Stay with me, idiot,” he mutters, shifting to his knees. “Can you walk?”

“Dunno,” Kirishima replies, sitting up with some effort and wincing before dropping back down with a groan. He hisses as the rod imbeds further into his flesh. “Fu— _uck…_ ”

Wordlessly, Bakugo sidles up parallel to Kirishima and hooks his crewmate’s arm over his shoulder, careful not to upset his injured side. “C’mon,” he grunts, hoisting Kirishima up to his feet. “Let’s go.”

Kirishima leans heavily against Bakugo as they walk, whimpering like an animal every few steps. He’s heavy in his suit, and with Bakugo’s own soreness and fatigue, he’s almost too much to carry.

“Commander,” Kirishima murmurs pathetically after they crest the hill to the Hab. “Where’s the crew?

Bakugo blinks against the brightness of the rising sun over the horizon, heart heavy with the answer. “They’re gone,” he replies solemnly. There’s no point in lying or sugar-coating the truth, he thinks. And yet somehow, saying that makes the reality of their situation so much worse.

His eyes flick over to the empty MAV site as he adds, equally grim, “I ordered them to leave.”

“But you’re here,” Kirishima points out, stumbling. Bakugo yanks him closer for stability, earning a suppressed yelp.

“Yeah,” Bakugo mumbles. “I am.”

Kirishima is silent after that, his questions apparently taking the wind out of his sails. They reach the door, which miraculously held in the storm. Bakugo supposes he can count that to his shrinking list of blessings. _1\. Kirishima’s not dead. 2. The door to the Hab is fine._ Might as well pray for a miracle in the meantime.

“I’m sorry,” Kirishima mumbles once they’re inside the airlock, wincing as Bakugo braces him against the side paneling to close the door.

“Shut up,” Bakugo demands, removing and discarding both his helmet and gloves, “and hold still.”

Kirishima does as he’s told, watching Bakugo carefully as he removes his helmet and gloves for him too. Under the visor, he’s even worse—his right brow and temple are black with bruising, a jagged cut tearing from his chin to the corner of his lower lip. His jasper-brown eyes are still glazed over, half-lidded.

“This is going to hurt, right?” Kirishima asks as Bakugo begins to ready himself to remove the rod. There’s no fear in his tone, though it trills. Only intrigue. Bakugo nods, clasping Kirishima’s hand tightly to steady him, the other hovering over the metal in his side.

They both pause for a moment, breath heavy. Bakugo watches as Kirishima’s gaze shifts in and out of focus. Never off of Bakugo’s face for a moment, even when it goes a bit shaky. An ever-present trust and an absolute bafflement of the fact that he’s not alone. Bakugo hopes he doesn’t look much the same, but between the stinging pinch of his brow and the dull ache in his lungs with every ragged breath, he’s afraid that he must.

“On three,” he whispers, fingers twitching with adrenaline. Kirishima nods once in consent, Adam’s apple bobbing in his bruised throat. Bakugo inhales.

“One—“

He moves swiftly, grabbing the rod and pulling it smoothly out of Kirishima’s gut. Examining it briefly—it’s clean, unbroken, good—he tosses it onto the ground with a dull clatter. Kirishima’s mouth opens, no sound coming out until Bakugo grabs his bare wrists and clamps both of his shaking palms over the now gushing wound.

Then, despite the cadet’s best efforts, he screams.

“You’re fine,” Bakugo insists loudly over the sound, though his voice has upped a few keys. He leaves Kirishima to hold the wound, crossing the the airlock to open up the door to the Hab’s atrium. “Don’t think about it.”

The pair hurries inside, Kirishima’s palm on Bakugo’s shoulder leaving a perfect bloodstained handprint. The commander strips him quickly of the top of half of his suit, dropping him into the exam chair by Sero’s old station before beelining for his stash of medical supplies.

“B-Bakugo,” Kirishima croaks from the chair, probing the puncture with his indelicate fingers. “S-something’s wrong…”

Bakugo returns with gauze, a syringe, and other instruments in tow. Dumping them onto the table, he peers over Kirishima, moving his blood-stained hand away for a moment.

The metal had not penetrated anything vital by the looks of it. But that was just speculation—even without puncturing an organ, it was still deep and potentially fatal. Bakugo has no way of measuring how much blood Kirishima had lost already, but he probably would not benefit by losing more.

“You’re going into shock,” Bakugo deduces, returning Kirishima’s hand to keep the pressure applied. “You’re going to feel like passing out, but you can’t. You have to stay awake.” He had not brought him this far to have him die on the table.

Kirishima swallows, tilting his head back. “Okay, okay, okay,” he babbles. Even with his dark complexion, his face is colorless, ashen. Bakugo needs to move quickly.

His training has already begun to kick in a bit, but it could only get him so far. Everything he’s about to do will be a patch job at best, and he knows it. Fuck, if Sero were here, he bemoans, grabbing some surgical scissors and cutting down the fabric of Kirishima’s shirt from his shoulder to his bicep, then down his torso.

“It needs…” Kirishima starts, wetting his lips and breathing hard as his skin twitches where the scissors come in contact. “It needs—stitches…”

“M’hm.” The gauze Bakugo had grabbed already has bloodstains on it somehow, large circular prints and smears on each side. He tosses it to Kirishima— “clean yourself up”— rummaging through the instruments for a numbing agent and a medical stapler.

Kirishima does his best, peeking through the sanguine bandages every so often. Bakugo finds a clean plunger and fills it with anesthetic, turning to Kirishima without warning and sticking the sides of the wound with five brisk hits of the needle.

“Ow,” Kirishima hisses through his teeth, almost an afterthought, as Bakugo removes the anesthetic. “You have… very bad bedside manner, Commander.”

“And you have enough sense in that thick skull to be a smartass,” Bakugo snaps. “So shut up and keep it covered.”

Wiping Kirishima’s blood on his shirt front, Bakugo retrieves a suture kit, kicking a rolling chair over to his side and sitting down. “Did it stop yet?” he asks as he scooches up.

“I don’t think so,” Kirishima mumbles, and Bakugo forces his hand up. The bleeding had, in fact, stopped a bit, still flowing off and on, but it was too much for Bakugo’s liking. He shoves some fresh gauze on top and pinches around the circumference of the puncture, sighing irritably.

“I’m sorry,” Kirishima whimpers through the quiver of his chin. Bakugo twitches his chin to the side, eyes still trained on the wound, jaw set.

“Stop,” he mutters, peeling up the cloth and grabbing the suture kit. “Don’t talk.”

Kirishima swallows and obeys, turning his head away as the needle slips through the first section of skin. Bakugo’s fingers shake as he works, the metal instrument wavering in the air with every stitch. Eventually, with little more than an errant prick of the needle, the wound is stitched and secured.

Bakugo breathes slowly as he snips the black thread, grabbing some antiseptic solution to clean up the blood around the tender skin of the wound.

“It’s my fault,” Kirishima continues quietly despite his first warning, and Bakugo is ready to cold cock him. “I put you and the crew in danger.”

Bakugo grits his teeth, knuckles curling into Kirishima’s abdomen against a patch of gauze. “Good Christ, shut _up_ , Shitty Hair. That’s an order.”

Any other time, he would have no regrets at yelling at his crew. Even Kirishima, who often deserved reprimanding the least of any of them. But right now, in this moment, having just finished sticking a needle into his crew member’s skin, with uncertainty fluttering in his chest, Bakugo doesn’t have time to think about why they’re still here. That Kirishima was the reason he stayed behind. That not a minute before he, too, was knocked out, Bakugo was ready to turn around and abandon him.

_Stop it. Shut up._

Kirishima does as he’s told, and Bakugo finishes patching him up without further incident. He leaves him with extra gauze and bandages to clean up, stalking off to the communal bathroom to reportedly check on his own wounds. They’re minimal—a scratch here and there on his face and neck, a nasty bruise on his thigh, and a pretty wicked headache that begins to subside after he pops a vicodin, dry.

Kirishima is half-asleep when he returns, his right arm draped over his belly, fingers an inch from his suture. His face his relaxed, lips parted in the same way he’d been found in the desert, and for a split second, Bakugo fears he may have died for real. But his chest rises smoothly and steadily, and though he’s seated at an awkward angle in the examination chair, he looks almost peaceful.

Bakugo lets his eyes linger on Kirishima for a few moments longer until his vision swims and he collapses to the ground by the threshold. _Adrenaline’s gone._ The thought briefly flashes through his mind before he shoves his head in his hands and breaks down amidst the spinning room around him.

He makes sure to stay quiet about it, but every cry burns like a brand against his heart. His back presses against the cool of the doorway and he shakes, head raised to the ceiling and lips parted as he breathes. _Breathe._ That’s really all he can do as reality folds over him, a suffocating blanket inside a claustrophobic room.

He wants to scream. Badly. But like hell he’d do it now with Kirishima there, yanked back from the brink of death, a ghost borrowing time on hope’s unsteady wings. Bakugo isn’t much different—both of them have timers now, a fuse that’s on the verge of blowing, candles waiting to be snuffed out. They’re alone on a planet never meant to sustain them, alone without contact to the one group that can get them out, left for dead in a world that, if it doesn’t kill them first, could drive them to kill each other.

Bakugo sighs, and it hurts as he shuts his eyes against the bright light of the room.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck is RIGHT, bakugo


	5. marooned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“If our oxygenator breaks, we suffocate. If our hydroconversion system breaks, we die of thirst. If the Hab is breached, our internal pressure will expand as such that we implode. And if by some miracle that doesn’t happen, eventually we’re going to run out of food and starve. So, yeah. I would say this is a bad situation.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOA I DEADASS FORGOT I WROTE THIS ONE
> 
> you guysssssss i'm? sorry this is also probably late (maybe? i'm not actually keeping track) but i have an excuse! i'm in berlin, germany for the summer and my entire writing schedule is fucked! anyway danke schön für lesen ich liebe dich
> 
> thank you all so much for the support and for sticking with me :D i still love this AU and i'm really going to try hard to see it out! just poke my with a stick if i forget

_SOL 19, 1:32 PM_

Kirishima wakes from a dreamless sleep to darkness.

He panics for a moment—where is he? What happened? His memories are slow to trickle back in, beginning first with sensation; his gut blooms with a throbbing pain, eyes squinting against the feeling and recoiling at the stabbing feeling in his forehead. He remembers being knocked out, waking up, being treated. He remembers Bakugo at his side, attending to him, helping him to bed. All of this, accompanied by a devastating wave of guilt.

_Commander._

Kirishima lifts his arm to rub his eyes. The slice of pain cuts up his side, and he hisses, jolting as if to escape it. Craning his neck, he stares down at his bare torso, noting the puckered centimeter-wide hole in his abdomen, held together by messy stitching. Curiously, he prods at it, knowing fully well that it would be best if he left it alone. He can’t help it—he’d had his fair share of stitches before, but never like this.

With a sigh, Kirishima begins the arduous task of sitting up completely. His mind swims as he struggles to pull all of his thoughts back to the surface, going wonky as he reaches a ninety-degree angle. He only recalls fragments, and the harder he tries, the more his brain swims. And, as terribly as his body hurt, he felt restless with all of these memories trying to batter down the brick wall inside his own head.

A loud clatter followed closely by an irritated curse erupts from down the hall in the atrium. Kirishima hesitates for a moment before shifting unsteadily and swinging his legs out of the bed. His limbs are stiff, responding poorly to any attempt at quick movement. It takes him a moment to stand, every inch of pressure like a vice against his aching muscles. Gritting his teeth through it all, Kirishima finally gets to a standing position, leaning heavily against the wall of the cubicle bedroom.

 _One small step,_ he muses. It doesn’t exactly put a smile on his face.

Carefully, he pads down in the dark until he spies light spilling from the atrium into the hallway. He can hear movement inside, the sound of metal twisting, typing, then silence. Suddenly, quietly, Bakugo’s voice rings out from within.

“Fucking stupid machine, I swear, if I hadn’t helped program you—”

Kirishima peeks out from behind the wall, eyebrows arched. Bakugo is hunched in front of the command station with his back to the doorway, fiddling with the monitor and apparently assembling some kind of recording device. As Kirishima watches, listening to the largely incoherent mutterings of his commanding officer, Bakugo suddenly straightens up and hurls a piece of cable against the computer screen. It’s hard enough to crack through the atrium, but luckily not enough to dent. Kirishima winces all the same.

Bakugo turns away from the counter, stalking further into the atrium and pushing his hands through his hair, holding them there as he stares at the ceiling, breathing hard. Kirishima notes the gauze square on his jaw, a bandage wrapped around his wrist as he paces, keeping his fingers laced behind his head.

Repositioning himself against the wall, Kirishima uses it as a crutch until it ends, and he’s standing unsteadily by one of the desktops. He hesitates to speak, lips parting and pursing twice before he finally gathers his thoughts enough to put them into words.

“Commander.”

Bakugo turns to face him, and Kirishima tenses. His eyes, though inexplicably reddened, stare straight through Kirishima’s own and practically burn into the metal of the threshold behind him. He brings his arms down, fingers still laced around the back of his neck before finally dropping completely as he looks away and returns to the monitor.

“You’re alive,” Bakugo observes, kicking a rolling chair out of the way to stand in front of the computer. Kirishima shifts his weight to his other foot, glancing down to his abdomen.

“Seems that way,” Kirishima half-laughs, ribs hurting from the extra air. “Thanks to you.”

Bakugo doesn’t answer, retrieving the discarded cord he had used to abuse the monitor with before and beginning to unwind it. Kirishima clears his throat, glancing away as he bites his lip.

“I’m sorry, Commander,” he blurts out after a beat of silence. “I compromised our situation and I put our crew in danger. I—”

“Stop talking,” Bakugo snaps tersely.

Kirishima’s muscles turn to stone. He pauses, swallowing and wetting his lips. “I just wanted to speak my peace, Commander.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Bakugo’s voice scratches in his throat, and he clears it with a disgruntled cough to his collar.

Kirishima feels his brow twitch. He knows Bakugo tends to be short with everyone, all the time, but right now he’s just acting like a tool. “I understand that you’re angry, Commander,” he tries, lowering his tone a bit to keep from sounding too irritated. “I know this is a bad situation—”

“‘A _bad situation_ ’?”

Bakugo slams his palms on the countertop, the wire still clutched in his bulky fist. Kirishima inhales sharply as he turns to face him, brow crinkled and eyes flaming.

“We are alone on an empty planet with limited supplies, no communication, and nowhere to go. Our crew probably thinks we’re dead. The next Mars exploration vessel isn’t set to arrive until _four years_ from now, and with the way this job went, that might even be delayed or cancelled entirely.”

As he talks, Bakugo walks deliberately across the atrium towards Kirishima until less than a foot of space is left between them. This close, Kirishima can see the bruising on his temple, a small split in the center of his upper lip. 

“If our oxygenator breaks, we suffocate” Bakugo continues, holding up one hand and counting off his fingers.

“If our hydroconversion system breaks, we die of thirst. If the Hab is breached, our internal pressure will expand as such that we _implode_. And if by some miracle that doesn’t happen, eventually we’re going to run out of food and starve. So, yeah.” He leans in, eye level with his cadet yet somehow still managing to look down on him. “I would say this is a _bad situation._ ”

The pair is still as the first wash of realization flows over both of them; it’s one thing to know it. It’s another thing to say it out loud.

“I know. I get it.” Kirishima chooses his words carefully, maintaining eye contact with his commander. “And I take full responsibility for it. But like it or not, we’re stuck here. We need to stay calm and focus. We need to make a plan.”

Bakugo’s nostril flares as he sets his hands on his hips. “So what, you get stabbed by an antenna and suddenly _you_ call the shots?” he hisses.

“No, it looks like I get stabbed by an antenna and suddenly _you_ stop being able to,” Kirishima retorts, louder than he’d meant to and surprised by the ice in his voice. Bakugo’s eyes widen before going black.

“You’d better watch your fucking mouth. Crew or no crew, I am still your _fucking_ Commander—”

“You could have left me.”

He watches as Bakugo’s face drains, though his expression remains ever the same. He clenches his fists, the muscles in his throat shifting as he swallows, hard enough to hurt. As grateful as he was towards his commander for being here and saving his life, Kirishima knows that the thought must have crossed his mind at some point since they’d been left behind. But regardless of whether or not Bakugo regretted that choice, it doesn’t give him carte blanche now to be an asshole about it.

Fearful he may lose momentum if he doesn’t, Kirishima takes a shaky breath before continuing. “You could have left me behind and I would have died. And you wouldn’t be here. But you didn’t. And that’s the reality of it. If we want to have any chance of surviving this, we’re going to need to work together. So if you want to blame me for the two of us getting stuck here, that’s fine. But I’m not giving up.”

The air between them is still, disturbed only by Bakugo’s quiet, semi-rapid breaths as he stares directly at Kirishima’s forehead, as if he’s imagining a blade going through it. Kirishima rolls his shoulders back and finishes, “and neither should you.”

Bakugo’s brow twitches, but he remains silent as he inhales, long and slow. He mutters something under his breath which Kirishima doesn’t catch, turning on his heel back towards the center of the atrium.

“You make it sound like there’s some other option,” he spits over his shoulder, arms crossed.

“There was,” Kirishima replies, “but then you went and stitched me back up.”

Bakugo snorts, and Kirishima can feel some of the tension in the room wash away. “You’re going to have to try harder to die next time,” he replies.

Despite the morbidity of their conversation, Kirishima smiles. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Even as he and Bakugo drop their hostile tones, an unease still grips icily at Kirishima’s heart, wrapping around it and squeezing tightly as he tries to push away the reality of their situation. Regardless of how piss-poor Bakugo was at behaving with any semblance of calm or composure when under stress, his words were true—this is a bad situation. The worst, as far as space travel is concerned. They’re trapped, with nowhere to go, nothing to do but bide their time and survive.

In short, they’re fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kirishima as soon as he makes eye contact with bakugo: [chuckles] i'm in danger!


End file.
